The winning retail media formula for a profitable peak shopping season
The holiday shopping season is the ultimate test for any retailer.
As shoppers flood eCommerce sites and marketplaces, the pressure builds to not only capture sales but also to maximize profitability.
For retailers with their own retail media networks, this peak season represents an unparalleled opportunity. But, with opportunity comes complexity.
The retail media ecosystem is maturing at an incredible pace, with advertisers expected to invest more than $60 billion in the United States this year alone.
This explosive growth has rightly pushed the industry toward simplification and standardization, making it easier for large brands to buy ad space across different networks.
While this is a positive step, simplification alone isn’t enough to win the holiday season. The true test of a retail media program is its ability to deliver incremental revenue and respond with agility when the stakes are highest.
Going beyond simplification to unlock incremental revenue
During the holiday rush, every ad placement counts.
The goal shouldn’t be just to make it easier for your largest brand partners to shift their existing budgets to your network. Rather, true growth comes from expanding the pie holistically.
It comes from activating the advertisers who are already invested in your platform ecosystem: your marketplace’s third-party sellers.
This group of “long-tail” advertisers represents a massive, and often untapped, source of incremental revenue.
Consider that on Amazon, third-party sellers spend 127% more on advertising than first-party brands.
If your retail media technology is too complex or lacks the self-service tools for these sellers to easily invest, you’re leaving high-margin revenue on the table.
Unlocking this potential requires a platform built on simplicity — not just for your teams but for advertisers of all sizes.
By providing automated campaign tools and AI-driven optimization, retailers can empower thousands of sellers to participate, launching performance-driven campaigns that add net-new revenue during the holiday peak.
Why agility is your secret weapon during the holiday crunch
The holiday season moves fast, with consumer trends shifting, popular products selling out and promotions changing in the blink of an eye.
An agile retail media network can adapt to these changes in real time, but many retailers are held back by legacy technology.
Imagine it’s the week of Black Friday and one of your top advertisers wants to immediately shift budget to a different ad placement to promote a product that’s trending.
With traditional retail media solutions, this often requires filing a support ticket with the technology provider and waiting for the change to be made manually. By the time the request is fulfilled, the opportunity may have passed.
This is where agility becomes a critical differentiator.
A modern retail media platform should provide a self-service ad inventory manager, giving your team — and your advertisers — full control to make changes on the fly.
This responsiveness not only improves campaign performance but also builds advertiser confidence, encouraging them to invest more. When advertisers know they can react instantly to market conditions, they are more willing to increase their spend.
The winning formula for a profitable peak season
The most successful retail media programs this holiday season will be built on a powerful combination of three strategic pillars:
Simplicity: Lower the barrier to entry with intuitive, self-service tools that allow all advertisers, especially third-party sellers, to easily launch and manage campaigns. Avoid overwhelming your advertisers’ teams by providing automated tools and AI-driven optimizations.
Incrementality: Activate new, performance-driven budgets throughout the entire seller base, not just capturing existing spend from large brands.
Agility: Enable advertisers to quickly adapt to holiday market changes with self-service ad inventory tools and real-time data. Allow for independent campaign optimization without technical support.
Focusing on these three areas doesn’t just reduce stress during the fourth quarter.
It builds a more resilient and profitable retail media program that fuels the retail media flywheel and can capture seasonal opportunities year-round, from Valentine’s Day to back-to-school season.
The impact can be both significant and immediate. For example, in just three months since launching, Jumia activated its ecosystem of 70,000 sellers and drove a 28% increase in ad revenue. With that kind of success story in a typical quarter, imagine the opportunity available during peak season.
As you finalize your holiday preparations, ensure your retail media strategy is equipped with the simplicity, incrementality and agility needed to win.
Learn how you can launch and scale a more profitable retail media network by contacting us today.
